Neda

HERE is the death that has become an icon.

As the messages scroll past, one can see in the repetitions--every Iranian Tweet ( heard claimed... and believe) is repeated more than 50 times. But not all are repeated... ReTweeted. There is a communal selection process... mythmaking before our eyes.
And nothing so far compares with the death of this young woman--the look of astonishment on her face... though I'm sure she was past consciousness, and that sudden flow of blood, the cries of her father... it is finished. Before our eyes. Before the eyes of the world.
We cannot see them all, all of the fallen. They vanish as though they never were--but for the few who mourne them, the fathers, sons, daughters, mothers, friends... and out the swelling need to see, we take up this single image, this single death, this single irreplaceble life and make of it a sign for all the others, all those otherwise lost, fallen in darkness...and in this vision we find... strangely... even for we who are not believers... light. A light that illuminates all ... all of the fallen.
Neda... has become her name, the voice of a revolution, the call to freedom.